ice and fire and iron and tears
by a simple space nerd
Summary: He watches her and wonders when she became so strong. (Marcus reflects on his best friends' daughter and thinks about the world he threw her into.)


**A/N: This is based around season 2, and I don't know if I got the characterisation right but it was fun anyways. If you can, please reviews, this is my first 100 story... thank you! Live long and prosper xx**

 **Disclaimer: Much to my disappointment, I don't any of the characters mentioned. If I did, all my pure little beans would be kept safe and happy and smile a whole lot more. ;)**

* * *

He watches her and wonders when she became so strong.

She'd always been strong, really, and he knows that, but these days when she walks through the camp with iron in her spine and ice in her eyes he steps back to let her pass. He, Marcus Kane, steps back for an eighteen year old girl with matted blonde hair and bloody hands and he wonders what they did to deserve Clarke Griffin.

That in itself says more than he'd like to admit.

* * *

Sometimes it's easier to forget, when she's with the other teenagers, sometimes she even smiles. (He wonders, briefly, if this is what Abby sees all the time when she looks at her daughter.) Other times she seems angry and wise and so much older than she should be but Marcus won't ever bring it up because _she's not a child, Abby._

Abby. Abby is wearing her daughter down and not in the way she'd like to think she is. Clarke's infinite patience is wearing very thin and she's clearly tired of having to pretend to lower her eyes in arguments and walk away from matters that she knows more about. Abby has forgotten that two months can change people, even up on the ark, and seems to still think Clarke needs her protection and coddling and is trying to push her opinions on top of Clarke's and it makes Marcus sad and disappointed when he sees it because sometimes it seems as though she has forgotten how to love too.

 _(She's forgotten lots of things, a voice in Marcus' head whispers. Marcus pushes it down.)_

* * *

When it comes to the remaining 100, Clarke is the only leader they will ever want or need or accept, along with Bellamy Blake, of course, and he wonders how she came to posses so much respect and admiration and love from a group of criminal kids. (Most times, it's stark evident and he watches her interact with them and their smiles light up the world and he smiles too.)

He has heard some of the stories, of _cutting people's throats to spare them pain,_ and _trying to make peace without giving up independence,_ and how she _always comes up with a plan, always,_ and most commonly how _Bellamy trusts her,_ and she is the _only one who can calm him down_ , and the _only one he will listen to_. (Except maybe his sister, who thinking of makes Marcus feel guilty ten times over.)

When he watches them, sitting at a campfire, side by side, he feels hope spring up in his chest because with leaders like them how could they fail?

(Jaha and Abby's voices yell at him from inside his head and he banishes the thought immediately because they're just kids, but still.)

His arm _isn't_ over her shoulders and they aren't even _looking_ at each other, but upon further inspection their knees touch and Clarke is leaning into him just a tiny bit, and Bellamy's smiles at what she says and his eyes crinkle up with happiness and perhaps relaxation and once or twice Clarke even laughs.

(Clarke doesn't laugh much these days and Abby screams one day that she can barely remember what it sounds like.)

(He foolishly brings up Bellamy but this further enrages the new Chancellor. _When did they get so close?_ She shrieks, _He's a criminal!_

 _He's good for her, Abby, can't you see,_ Marcus wants to say, and _we sent her down here with criminals so really what did you expect,_ but he keeps his mouth shut because Jaha didn't and look where that got him.)

When Bellamy and Clarke are in a room together, they don't have to use words and Marcus thinks that if they survive this, he will tell them how much he admires this. A glance from her will coax a nod from him and even a slight twitch of their eyebrows can change their plans.

(This makes Abby livid.)

* * *

One day, soon after Marcus arrives, he asks Clarke to take him to see the graves. She doesn't look up from her map of Mount Weather as she asks him flatly _why_ and only when he says _to pay his respects_ does she look up, eyes hard and calculating and Marcus thinks to himself that he shouldn't be waiting for the approval of a seventeen year old but _what the hell._ She's in charge and he can't really deny it.

She brings him past the gate, and the sentry barks out demands of _why are they here_ and _where do they think they're going_ and Marcus is about to explain but Clarke levels the man with a single stare and he lets them go.

Clarke gathers plants quietly as he sits on the remains of a charred tree stump and stares at the mounds of dirt that hid children. The ground inside the fence of spears and branches is charred and skeletal and Marcus is still in awe of the kids they sent to the ground as lab rats because _look what they've accomplished._

 _(Murder, hisses a voice in his head, you've made them all murderers. Survivors, he hisses back. They've become survivors.)_

He watches her out of the corner of his eye, and he knows she is well aware of it, but he has so many things to say but no idea how to say them.

 _(Where did she learn to use a gun? Is that a sword hanging off her hip? How did these kids die? Who was Anya and how did you already know her? And mostly Thank you Thank you Thank you because so many more could have died too but they didn't.)_

* * *

After Finn dies (is killed) Marcus doesn't know what to say so he doesn't say anything. Abby takes her few tears for vulnerability and tries to be a reassuring parental figure and Clarke is too tired to fight her off for a couple moments but he sees her anger clearly.

He knows she has killed before and he wonders why this has hit her so hard.

Not that it shouldn't.

Because it should.

But still.

He hears her later with Bellamy saying, _there was no other way,_ And he says he _knows, Princess._ And then she says _but what if there was, though, oh god what have I done I should have tried harder,_ and she's crying and Marcus hears shifting that tells him Bellamy has put his arm around her. _He told me he loved me,_ she says a few seconds later and Bellamy's grip tightens, and Marcus thinks _ohhh_.

But when when the commander calls her in, most of the evidence of tears are gone and she is strong and fierce even after killing the boy she loved. Marcus walks away without saying anything and the word _coward, coward, coward_ , drums in his ears.

(He knows he would never have the courage to do what she did.)

* * *

She grows even harder and more scarred after Finn, and Marcus has always wondered if she was more ice or iron and this is no exception. Sometimes it's ice, _(you may be chancellor but I am in charge)_ and sometimes iron _(not until my friends are safe)_ and he realises what she has always seemed to be missing. When she is a bloody grimy mess, she seems more alive than he's ever seen her and her eyes blaze with fire. _Fire_ is what she has been missing because neither ice and iron can do much without it.

 _(Bellamy is fire, he thinks not too soon after. Bellamy is made of fire and freedom and protectiveness and determination and burning passion and a wild will to survive and over everything crackling love, love, love.)_

But it's ice, he decides later. Clarke is made of _ice_ because iron has no place on the ground anymore, and there is more ground in her than sky and space now, and maybe there always has been.

Marcus smiles as he sees them walk out of Camp Jaha with a small group because after all, they have their flaws, the both of them, but they won't ever give up and he can admire that. Respect it, even.

 _(Marcus turns away and pretends he didn't see them slip though the wire.)_

* * *

Even later, Marcus realises what he forgot about ice.

(Ice can break too)

* * *

 **A/N: So... If you're reading this, how was it?**


End file.
